Part 10 (2/2)
”I can't.”
”Maybe some other time then?”
”Yes”
”Oh, wait! I forgot. Here, you might be needing this,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. It was the rosary the priest had given me when I had visited the church. I was surprised to see it. I didn't remember losing it.
”Oh, thanks. Where did you find it?”
”In the bushes along the back of the building.”
I wondered how he knew it was mine. I knew we were the only two living in the apartment complex, but still. The bushes were along the end of the building and nowhere close to where I remembered being. Maybe the wind took it, but how did he know?
David left just minutes before I walked out.
As I drove, I thought of the time when it first starteda”when we started having s.e.x. Back when I was younger, back in my past life, I hated him. I resented him. The vision of Drake's father still burned in my mind. I often wondered why it even happened in the first place, and how? Did I make it happen? He didn't love me, I knew that. When I felt his hands touching me in the middle of the night, I'd fake being asleep. He would crawl through my window to make sure he was undetected. In my sick way of thinking, I pretended he did love me.
”Shh,” he had whispered. ”This will only take a few minutesaI promise, you'll enjoy it.”
I had lain there in the bed, acting as if I didn't care, but it broke my heart he was cheating on hera”and with me no less. At first I was scared and didn't know how to react. He made me feel dirty. I felt everything I knew was just a lie.
Every night the same thing would happen. As soon as we were alone, he would crawl into bed with me. It wasn't until I felt something growing inside me that I left hima”when I left home. That something growing in my belly was Drake. Adam would never hurt me again.
After waiting in the doctor's room for a while, he came in and asked me how I was. I got into it right away.
”I have these images of my past lifeabefore the incident,” I said to him, looking down into my lap, then out the window.
”Everyone goes through this, Charlene. Amnesia is an illness. Some people never recover, and some remember things they never even knew happened.”
”Yes, I know, but it still feels so real. I believe it is.”
”Remember, it takes time to heal,” he said sifting through his papers.
I wasn't getting anywhere with him. Clearly he didn't understand or didn't want to. I was beginning to see it was all a business. I finally noticed my doctor had no bedside manner, and all he cared about was the money he made.
”This isn't working for me,” I said.
I got up and walked out.
As I drove to the hospital, reminding myself I might get answers there, I thought of the incident again, when I was rescued. How could I have spent ten days in the lake, or around the lake, until help came? I remembered falling in the lake, descending off the bridge and hitting the ice-cold water.
New images started to form in my mind. It was too hard to drive, so I pulled over on the side of the road, just like I had done before only weeks ago. Again, I heard a voice: ”She made a mistake and unintentionally killed herself. It wasn't supposed to happen this time. She accidentally slipped and fell, cracking her heart open. She thought it would release the pain, but instead it backfired. Shattered, and now the pieces infect her as she reflects on what she did. She walks along the lake of her fleshy tides, now collecting the shards she mistakenly broke, looks at them, thinking they are now beautiful in a different wayafeeling the fall may happen yet again. We must save her, dear Lord.”
It was Delmara's voice. As the image grew, I could see a woman in the water. She had given up feeling, gone numb, let her skin freeze. She watched her organs fail to thrive below frigid water and turn to stone. Her face, pale white like the winter clouds, gazed upon a November moon as snowflakes adorned her eyelids, sealing them shut. Her flowing hair breathed along the currenta”a blonde mane of silk, with flecks of blue, caressed her as she lay beneath sheets of ice, a place she had gone before. It was the lake of my dreams. The woman in the lake had been me as ten days pa.s.sed before my eyes, and the man that saved me looked vaguely familiar. As I watched these new images form in my mind, the man turned around, yet I could not see his face.
I remembered how the transformation felt.
I began to feel a different sidea”a side I wasn't familiar witha*spreading inside me; a future. Thinking only of this growth, I removed my dead mind of the past, washed my eyes of doubt and loosened my heart to free my love. I was unclothed of skin to provide warmth for my new unborn thought. There I lay with my chest open, letting the spindled array of light breathe new life into me as I kissed my past life good-bye and welcomed the sun.
As I floated upward under the water, I could feel her thoughts run through mine. ”This is not the end for you, Charlene, yet a re-birth of the new. It takes time to mend death. Your sin will remain on trial until you are healed.”
My vision seemed like I had been experiencing it all over again, and in the blink of an eye, it was gone.
I started the engine of the car and went to the hospital for more answers.
Chapter Twenty.
After lingering in the E.R. waiting room for nearly two hours, Nurse Goodson finally walked up to me, introducing himself. ”Hi, are you Miss Peters?” he asked, reaching his hand out to shake mine.
”Yes, I wanted to speak with you about an incident that happened a year ago.”
”Okayaa year ago? A lot goes on here, but I'll try.”
”Last year, around this time, I had to be hospitalized.”
”Yeah, I thought you looked familiara”bipolar, right?”
”Yeah, how did you remember?”
”Hard to forget a beautiful woman like you. You were very distraught.”
”Oh.” I blushed. ”Well, you might remember the man that brought me in. Chris was his name, I believe.”
”Don't remember much about him. All I know is he brought you in through the E.R. doors and waited around to make sure you were okay. He didn't ask much.”
”Do you remember what he looked like?”
”No, like I said, people walk in and out of here every day, hard to remember everyone.”
”Yeah, sorry. I just thoughtawell, is there anything else you remember?”
He stood here and paused for a moment, holding his hand up to his chin. ”Ahh, yes! There was one thing.”
”What?”
”His last name.”
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